Bank Overdraft??!!

Katrina had an early morning meeting today, so I got up and took Brandon to school today. We rode our bikes so that I could hit the road straight from school. I was going to do a nice long ride today, but my bike is having a wheel issue, so my ride was cut short. I will need to get my back wheel to a bike shop tomorrow and see if they can fix it.

The rest of my day was spent doing laundry and fixing an issue with our Italian bank account. We don't keep much in it to begin with. Just enough to auto pay our phone, TV and electric bills. Unfortunately, I checked our balance this morning and we were overdrawn by e77! I checked the transactions and noticed a large sum of money withdrawn last Thursday. Well, first off, I called Katrina to make sure I was aware of all our bills. She was surprised as well.

This afternoon I went to the bank armed with copies of our account transactions and my Italian dictionary. I managed to get an employee who spoke a very little bit of English. Between his little English, my little bit of Italian and my dictionary we determined that something was wrong. He actually had to search through a box of transaction papers from last Thursday (even though all records are on the computer) to find out that the teller entered the wrong account number by an even 100. It was for a paycheck to an employee. We don't have any employees!! They fixed the problem and credited the transaction fee and overdraft fee. As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, the amount of paperwork to do 'official' transactions in Italy is absolutely amazing. Marco (the employee helping me) had to print 11 different pages to fix the problem, then had to stamp and date each one. I got 2 of those 11 copies. The rest were stapled and sealed with an official gold seal.

Anyway, I felt good about solving the issue. I can get things done in Italian if I really have to!

Brandon had Aikido after school today. He seems to really be enjoying it.

I made Orecchiette con Broccoletti di Rape e Mandorle - pasta with brocolli rabe and almonds - for dinner, along with red wine and olives.